City Council: Changes ahead for Christmas lights in Batesville

By Andrea Bruner, White River Now

The holiday lights are a go for the “Christmas Capital of Arkansas” but there will be modifications.

On Tuesday night, Cemetery/Landscape Department Supervisor Johnathan Abbott updated the city council on his department’s recent work. His presentation is part of a series of ongoing updates from city department heads.

“We will have Christmas lights,” Mayor Rick Elumbaugh said in starting off the discussion about the lights, but “we’re going to take a different approach. There are challenges, when you grow and you’re the Christmas capital of Arkansas.”

The growth is the construction of the water treatment plant and the Riverside Park expansion project, which are happening at the same time right across the street from one another – and right in the heart of the city’s holiday lighting display.

With the number of visitors to Batesville surpassing 100,000 during the holiday season, Elumbaugh said the biggest challenge is “We’re out of our home – we’re out of Riverside Park. So we’re really trying to think ahead and get the backing of our community and hit it in ’27.”

Elumbaugh said there were many challenges last year with the lights, White River Express train rides and horse and carriage rides all being around the community center, so the city is making some changes.

“We’re not going to do the White River Express this year,” he said, explaining that so many businesses and industries rent the community center gymnasium for holiday parties, while the train and carriages were traveling the path behind the community center.

“They had to bus individuals in,” Elumbaugh added.

“And the slide – we’re going to silent that for a year. We’ll probably end up moving it. We left it there hoping we would do the food (concessions),” but the concessions will not be sold this year, either.

Elumbaugh said they have visited with the carriage owners to see if they can find a route they feel comfortable leading horses on, so that is still unknown.

“We will have a beautiful Christmas display. And as a matter of fact, I even have a lady today to come up … she is also working with a movie, and she came to Batesville to look at the possibility of coming and shooting some scenes during this.”

However, Abbott said not having “the amenities” like the concessions and train rides will allow his department to “focus more on our energy on doing the lights” instead of creating safety barriers, monitoring lines, keeping people out of traffic, etc.

“The mayor and I were talking the other day, and I think the lesser of the two evils is to make it more drive-through than a walk-through due to the lack of space and the conflicts of parties and events at the community center,” Abbott said.

Traffic will be directed down 20th, around the roundabout, and to Pioneer Drive, then over to Riverside Park.

Santa Claus will likely be available for visits in a location near The River restaurant, so people can park at the golf course.

“We’ll shuffle some of the bigger items like the castle would go in what we call Park 4, which is down by The River restaurant,” Abbott said, “because that’s where everybody likes to take their photos. And then you’ll have maybe the walk tunnels right there. And so if there’s any walking, it would be right there in the park. The rest of it will be driven.”

He stressed that this year’s display will be limited. “It’s not going to be like it was three years ago in Riverside Park,” he said.

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Abbott also discussed the many duties of the Cemetery/Landscape Department, which includes himself and 10 other team members (aside from temporary staff during the holiday season).

The team routinely mows and maintains approximately 50 properties around the city, spanning 200-300 acres.

Areas mowed or otherwise maintained by the city include: Oaklawn Cemetery, Row Lake and the community center; Riverside and Kennedy Parks; Ramsey Slough; Poke Bayou bridge and Bayou Street; bayou park; bayou trail; chamber of commerce; Old Independence Regional Museum; Chaney and Pioneer Drive to the community center, including mowing/weed eating part of the water plant area as well as the farmers market and the community garden; the dog park; Fire Stations 1 and 2; Westside Park; the levee; the industrial park; the police department and the old Entergy building; Pioneer Cemetery on College; public works building; Riverwalk; shooting range; veterans plaza and flower bed; Greenway walking trail; the welcome signs on the north and south ends of town; end of Denny Circle and end of Red Oak; and the west end of Francis.

The department also maintains the following intersections: Baker Street and Highway 106; Bates and River; Boswell and Broad; Dogwood and Cedar; Eagle Mountain and Harrison (trash only); Eagle Mountain and Woodmont Circle; Edith and 106; Harrison and Fifth; Lilly and Boggs; Melton and Francis; and Walnut Heights and Gap Road.

Beyond routine maintenance, the team also steps in to resolve overgrown yard complaints reported to Code Enforcement.

“We maintain 18 different flagpoles scattered throughout the city as well,” Abbott added. “That’s raise the flag, lower the flag, raise the flag, lower the flag. It takes a minute to do that. There have been six times since January that we have had to lower them and raise them back up; we got another one today (Dolly Parton), so we’ll be lowering them in the morning.”

Abbott said his crew will bring the bucket truck to assist other departments with anything aerial or things they cannot reach from the ground (changing bulbs in the stoplights, for example, or tree limbs that are hanging so low they could be a safety hazard).

“We do most of the opening and closing of the streets for events and make sure the barricades are in place,” he continued. “Barricades are a little bit costly, and they may get tossed out in the street … for whatever reason – they vanish.”

The department also handles maintenance at City Hall (all three stories), such as janitorial issues, water leaks, changing lights, pest control, and small projects. He did say the elevators are having issues typical of an “aging facility” and that two elevator companies have gone so far as to say the ones in city hall are “outdated.”

Abbott said there are more than 10,000 people buried in Oaklawn Cemetery alone. “That’s a lot of headstones to have to maintain around so it doesn’t get the golf course treatment. We do the best we can. Our cemetery day is Monday. We get one day to spend on cemeteries, and that’s mow 40 acres and weed eat what we can.”

Abbott said that since January, there have been 30 funerals at Oaklawn, so that means 60 days in eight months set aside to handle the opening and closing of graves.

Alderman Robb Roberts asked what expenses the department would be looking at in the next few years, and Abbott said the city’s buildings are getting older, and staffing is always an issue.

“The amount of area that we cover…it’s not just centrally located. It’s scattered. It’s literally from one end of town to the other,” he said.

“But with added projects comes added ground and added maintenance – that is something that concerns me for the future,” he said.

Elumbaugh said equipment is another challenge, but it’s one that all cities across the country are facing. Equipment is more expensive than ever before.

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In other business Tuesday night:

–Parks and Recreation Director Lowen Lermitte shared numbers regarding fall sports.

“Fall soccer has over 400 kids again this season,” he said, noting that the fall baseball season has drawn more than 100 participants. There will also be a skills and drills clinic for softball, with hopes of utilizing Batesville High School players to help teach fundamentals, he said.

The community center has 3,153 active members, and on a busy day when the pool is open, there will easily be more than 1,000 people visiting.

Lermitte said the municipal golf course has 86 active members, but that includes family memberships, so the number of users is actually higher. He said there were nearly 7,000 rounds played last year, and they are on pace to surpass that number this year.

“We’re seeing the daily-fee play going down but membership rounds going up, so we’re turning daily-fee people into members,” he said.

He said the Riverside Park expansion project is still on target for a December 2026 completion date, and that includes the 25,000-square-foot events center with a ballroom that can easily seat 750 people (right now, the largest event at the community center sees around 500 people).

He said the outdoor sports courts are done, and work will soon start on the new splash pad, followed by the nature play and greenspace.

Lermitte said there have been challenges, particularly with the water intake construction at the river, but overall “everything is on schedule the way we want it to be.”

He also said Batesville had secured some grant funding for new mountain bike trails around town (see maps). “We had a very unique opportunity for the city to capitalize on a growing sport in this area, but it’s nothing new to Arkansas. As a state, we’re a world leader in mountain bike trails, so having Batesville be another draw for that is great.”

Phase 1 may include Riverside Park, Pioneer Drive going south of the traffic circle, and the East Main Street soccer complex. “We hope to get boots on the ground in November,” Lermitte said. “We have a lot of existing trails around the city, and one of the appeals for the grant is to connect all the dots. There are lots of opportunities for people to get out and be healthy and active, not so sedentary.”

Lermitte said the new skatepark is not open, but there have already been multiple instances of graffiti, as reported by White River Now on Aug. 17. “We want to embrace the people who want to use the skatepark, but how can we channel these creative minds into a good space?”

A committee is meeting Friday to consider options, and Lermitte said he will report back to the mayor and council. He did say there is a possibility of adding video surveillance as well as restructuring park personnel to help monitor the area.

–Sanitation Department Supervisor Jason Jones also presented a report to the council, noting that his department had a rough spring, when two trucks were down, one for almost 40 days and the other for almost 28.

“When you don’t show up to take people’s trash up, they start calling,” he said.

The city had also received a bad batch of fuel in the past year, and now the drought and heat stress are causing trees to drop leaves earlier than usual, so sanitation is prepping its leaf pickup equipment for a busy season ahead.

“The guys picked up 60-something bags in one or two locations today,” Jones said. “A lot of people are bagging them, but we’re already starting to see them on the side of the road.”

The city has seen an increase in Class 4 pickups (a term for special pickups for bulky items like mattresses and furniture, as well as construction materials). “We usually see $1,400 a month in disposal fees; now we’re at $2,500,” Jones said. “There’s also been an increase with regular refuse disposal. We average $5,500 a month, up from $5,100 or $5,200.”

He said that in one week alone, the city picked up 40 mattresses.

“It’s amazing how much (trash) we produce in a day,” Jones said.

He said the city’s garbage goes to the Cherokee Village Landfill, but the landfill increased its price to Independence County by 16 percent, and he expects that cost to be passed on to the city of Batesville, too.

He said the biggest obstacle his department faces is making the public aware of how categories of trash should be separated at the curb. “We have repeat offenders where brush and Class 4 are piled together. Those go to two separate places on two separate trucks.”

Another issue is with remodeling projects, where contractors will put “a whole remodel on the side of the road,” he continued. “And when we catch those, we’ll knock on the door and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to get a roll-off dumpster. We’re not taking that if your contractors are responsible for that.’”

Other times, he said, people move out in the middle of the night, and “the landlord will put the whole house on the curb and call for a pickup.”

Another issue is that professional tree-trimming companies offer a discounted price if they don’t have to haul away the debris, since “the city will come pick it up for free.”

“So we really cracked down on that because it should be their responsibility,” Jones said. “It shouldn’t be a burden on the city.”

Last month, he said they caught a resident putting tree trimmings/brush in trash bins, but that is not allowed.

He also said code enforcement can write citations for violations.

Tires are another challenge, Jones said. “We have nowhere to go with them anymore, even though the state is collecting a disposal fee.”

In Arkansas, tire buyers have paid a $3 rim-removal fee per tire to cover disposal costs, but Jones said the fee is increasing. Under new legislation that went into effect on July 1, that fee remains in place but will no longer cover tire transportation.

However, Jones said there is no local program that accepts tires, and the city does not currently pick them up. “We produce enough at the shop that’s hard to manage.”

He did say that Davis Rubber Co., which has a recycling and processing facility in Little Rock, has a pickup trailer behind Kent’s Firestone in Batesville, where residents may drop off two tires a month.

As for electronics, those are not currently accepted at the recycling station, but the city is collecting electronics without batteries to be taken to a site in Little Rock, Jones said.

–The council passed an ordinance authorizing hearings and payment of claims for damages caused from the water or sewer systems – up to $20,000.

As the ordinance states, “insurance coverage for property owners for damages sustained from injuries to property caused by malfunctions, breaks or line stoppages in these systems is often unavailable or inadequate to cover losses” and “it is inequitable that random property owners should suffer injury to their property without fault.”

It also states that property owners should exhaust all insurance coverage and all remedies against third parties before seeking payment from the city.

The new ordinance stems from an incident on Elm Street where a home was damaged by roots growing into the wastewater pipes. The previous ordinance capped the amount the city would pay at $10,000, but the Elm Street damage was well over that amount, and at its Aug. 11 meeting, the council made a special provision to pay $20,000 of the total bill, after the homeowner’s insurance had paid.

The council waived the second and third readings of the ordinance, which was then adopted with an emergency clause, making it effective immediately.

Aldermen Paige Hubbard and Fred Krug were absent.

File image: Batesville Municipal Building, Gena Tate for White River Now